Week Three Activities and online games

Today in the workshop we looked at doing activities with cardboard/paper and then designing online games. Greg spoke to us about the need to train children in the design process - Investigate/Design, Produce, Analyse/Evaluate. (Also note problem to be solved, and resources required). Can be messy because is rough draft at first. When all designs have been completed, children can write up their final design brief and draw a picture/take a photo of their creation. The example brief that Greg gave us was to give us a picture of a frog, some cardboard to stick it to, and a rubber band, and then design a process to make it jump.

The important thing is to document the process using the Design Brief, and to have a go. Get the children using the language of design - "template" etc. If one group of children couldn't get their design to work - talk it through with them/the class - why it didn't work. In our workshop we went though all the different products and there were about 5 main ways people had designed their jumping frogs. These sorts of activities use higher order thinking processes - which, of course, should be encouraged at all times.

Frog about to jump across the desk

It is a good idea to do one of these activities in class each week.

Frog at rest on desk. Note rubber band.

Next we moved to Online Games - http://www.quia.com/. This website allows a 30 day free trial if you register with an email address.

Online quizzes and activities can be very useful to reinforce learning in the classroom. For example, quizzes and activities based on the book the class is reading, or country class is studying, etc. Follow these links for:

• my quiz on New Zealand: http://www.quia.com/quiz/2511795.html.



• my Battleship quiz on Melbourne: http://www.quia.com/ba/409888.html



• my Hangman activity on Farm Animals: http://www.quia.com/hm/667569.html



• my Cloze activity on You, Your and You're : http://www.quia.com/cz/347254.html

These online games ideas are all great for bringing creativity into the classroom and for engaging children. I hope to use them on a regular basis.